This week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) released a television ad that slammed President Barack Obama on several
fronts: guns, abortion, climate change (it's not a true threat), and the war on
terrorism. In the ad, the almost-top-tier GOP presidential candidate proclaims,
"America needs a real commander in chief and a president that will keep us
safe." And, as part of his indictment of Obama, Rubio huffs, "He
spies on Israel."

Rubio's message seems to be that a strong and
effective US leader would not spy on Israel, and that Rubio would not
green-light espionage operations that keep an eye on that nation. No doubt,
that would delight Israel and its spies, who have long targeted Washington with
aggressive espionage operations.outraged conservative supporters of Israel within the
United States. But what has such spying unearthed? That Israel spies on the
United States.

That's not news. Jonathan Pollard, an American who
worked for Navy intelligence, passed a ton of classified information to Israel,
in what experts routinely describe as one of the most significant espionage
cases in US history. He was caught in 1985, convicted, and sentenced to life in
prison. In Israel, though, he was hailed a hero. And for years, Israel and some
prominent Jewish Americans, including GOP
billionaire Sheldon Adelson,
pressed for Pollard's release. (Two months ago, he was finally released on parole.) But Pollard was hardly the only
Israeli spook who connived to swipe American secrets.

More recently, Jeff Stein, a veteran journalist on the
intelligence beat, reported inNewsweek in 2014 that US
intelligence officials discussed the issue at a top-secret congressional
briefing, noting:

Israel's espionage activities in America are unrivaled
and unseemly…going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as
Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a
briefing last January called the testimony "very sobering…alarming…even
terrifying." Another staffer called it "damaging."

"No other country close to the United States
continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do," a former
congressional staffer told Stein. This source disclosed that US intelligence
officials had cited "industrial espionage—folks coming over here on trade
missions or with Israeli companies working in collaboration with American
companies, [or] intelligence operatives being run directly by the government,
which I assume meant out of the [Israeli] Embassy." In a follow-up story,
Stein noted, "Despite strident denials this week by Israeli
officials, Israel has been caught carrying out aggressive espionage operations
against American targets for decades, according to U.S. intelligence officials
and congressional sources. And they still do it. They just don't get arrested
very often."

In 2014 one of the documents obtained by Edward
Snowden became public, revealing that the National Security Agency and the US
intelligence community had long worried about Israeli spying on the United
States. It read:

The Israelis are extraordinarily good SIGINT partners
for us, but…they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems. A
NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive
intelligence service against the U.S.

As the Wall Street Journalreported last March, Israel spied on the US-led talks
with Iran regarding Tehran's nuclear program:

The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to penetrate the
negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms
of the deal,
current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel
acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and
diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said…

"It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy
on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play
them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy," said a senior
U.S. official briefed on the matter.

And how did the United States discover that Israel was
spying on it and using the secrets it obtained to subvert official US policy?
By spying on Israel:

The White House discovered the operation, in fact,
when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications
among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come
only from access to the confidential talks.

Following this revelation, Foreign Policynoted, "Jerusalem's ongoing espionage campaign has
worried U.S. officials so significantly that they have strenuously opposed an effort on Capitol Hill to include Israel in a
regime of visa-free travel, which American spies fear will facilitate the
travel of Israeli operatives into the United States."

So back to Rubio. As a member of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, he presumably is aware of the extensive Israeli
intelligence operations against the US government and American businesses. Yet
Rubio, a favorite of Likud-loving neocons (and reportedly
Adelson), castigates Obama
for spying on Israel and its spies. Would he really turn off all US espionage
programs focused on Israel, which would give the Israelis a free hand to
continue their intelligence operations against the United States? (Is this a
plot line for the next season of Homeland?)

I sent the Rubio campaign an email with two questions:

* Does the senator believe that the US government
should never mount any intelligence-gathering operations regarding Israel?

* Does the senator believe that the US should not spy
on Israel to detect possible Israeli intelligence actions aimed at the United
States government, such as the Pollard operation?

The Rubio campaign declined to respond. Without
further clarification, Rubio is sending a clear signal: If elected president,
he would be good news for the spies of Israel.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West